You won't believe how many trolls and listicles begin their pieces with "you won't believe", and immediately the pond understands that indeed, it won't believe, that only the simple-minded would believe ... but it would believe that the reptiles are now trying to catch up with the intertubes, circa 2005:
Etc etc yadda yadda, but more on the unbelievable Chavura anon - first the pond must report that it caught a glimpse of Rebecca Weisser on The Drum last night, and was immediately reminded of that phrase used about Calvin Coolidge, that he was "weaned on a pickle".
Actually Weisser looked and sounded like she'd eaten a jar of dill pickles minutes before fronting the cameras. The pond understands the source of her unhappiness - life has dealt her many bitter blows - but why share a pickle with her?
Now the pond has nothing against pickles, and is partial to a pickle at the right time and place, but as so often happens with 'their ABC' these days, the pond immediately switched off and allowed the logarithms to do their thing, and settled down to the more amusing work of watching Louis C. K. on Colbert talk about the Donald as a "gross, crook, dirty, rotten, lying sack of shit" ...
Always modestly understated.
But that was then, and today brings fresh reptile alarums and concerns.
Did the pond say fresh? Really it's more like the usual set of dill pickles, marinated in vinegar and dragged out of the jar for yet another go round the mulberry bush ...
As usual, the reptiles were in a state of gender hysteria ...
Good old Becca ... like a remorseless eating machine ... and then there was gay fear ...
It was the beguiling "WATCH" that gave the clickbait game away ...and it made a nonsense of the notion that licking ice cream might lead to licking pussy ... if it's so dangerous, so unsafe, why the invitation to "WATCH"? Well it's clickbait 101, and it dates the reptiles to the start of the new millennium ...
Then the devotees of Gina did their reptile thing and faithfully reproduced her words ...
Yet another billionaire explaining how stocking the swamp with billionaires is some kind of draining.
The phenomenon, which is quite phenomenal, has even managed to make the likes of Newsweek here sound socialist left-leaning ...
These rich folk are seriously weird, and anxious to live forever, as recorded in Tad Friend's seriously eccentric feature story for the New Yorker, The God Pill, Silicon Valley's Quest To Live Forever, which is happily outside the paywall at the moment ...
But all good things must come to an end, and the pond had to turn to the reptiles for this day's serve. You won't believe how many different ways there are to dress up a pickle.
You also won't believe that the pond decided that Chavura was the go, because there were many hot to trot competitors ...
Yes, the Bolter defending Pauline Hanson ... but that's as predictable as the Bolter finding many redeeming features in Genghis Khan ... provided the Khan keeps to the right path ...
No, it had to be Chavura, a bright new shiny reptile offering ...
This sounds unnervingly like a zillion reptile stories of indignation and agitation that have flooded the reptile pages in recent years, and the pond wanted to know more about the author.
Fortunately, the full to overflowing intertubes provides all sorts of clues and insights ...
And the lad is a Trump follower, at least on Twitter, and fond of citing The Bolt Report ...
There were more clues on LinkedIn for anyone who has joined that pernicious site ...
No active links - screen cap only - but easy enough to find, and isn't that "Church History Moderator for the Australian College of Theology" a handy clue ...?
Then there was the official Macquarie University listing, which began this way ...
Again no active links, but easy enough to find.
The pond stopped at "rethinking secularism in Australia", it being too much to hope that anyone might actually rethink Christianity, Catholicism, angry Sydney Anglicanism, complimentary women and the whole damn thing ...
Never mind, the pond had something of a fix on Dr Steve, and was ready to devour the final gobbet, hoping that there would be plenty of fear of Islamics and gays and 18C scattered into the cake like a good dose of sultantas and currants, in the Tamworth fruit cake style ...
Indeed, indeed. You probably don't believe it, but it was everything the pond was expecting, and that disclaimer at the end actually revealed nothing of interest about Chavura, his interests and his enthusiasms ...
As for the arguments? Well it must be the zillionth time that someone has jumped into the lizard Oz and moaned and whinged and whined about how their freedom to speak was being trampled on, while they trumpeted on, like a loud gong, or a clashing cymbal, in a way which made the pond just want to sidle away in search of silence, or do a Louis C. K. and shout, "oh just shut the fuck up, you boring unbelievable gong cymbal ..."
When did the patriarchal, totalitarian, Catholic church stop censoring and issuing moral instructions of the most offensive kind? The pond must have missed that story, celebrated by some Chavura column somewhere ...
Never mind, after all that, here's the opening to Colbert ... the rest is easily accessed for anyone wanting an alternative to a noisy gong cymbal ... but now it's on with the phenomenal whimsy ...
I've always had a wee bit of a problem coming to terms with Ayaan: her early years certainly weren't wonderful and I have absolutely no problem with her being hostile to Islam, especially since she's still under threat of religiously motivated murder, I believe.
ReplyDeleteBut then, she is just a tad "righteous" and she did marry that dick-headed RWNJ Niall Ferguson.
I sometimes recall a conversation I had quite a few years ago when discussing feminism with a mate and she opined that the women of Muslim persuasion who maintained that they were already liberated and didn't need "feminism" should be listened to. So, I replied, when many women in England protested against the Suffragettes, they should have been listened to and the feminist ladies should have abandoned their cause. [Only time I've ever made a comeback on the spot I'm almost happy with :-) ]
So what to make of Ayaan ? I still don't know, personally. Does anyone here know ?
Even though it is run by Moslems you could try this reference which gives some necessary balance to her adulation by the right-wing loons.
Deletewww.loonwatch.com/tag/ayaan-hirsi-ali
That is informative, thanks Anony. My conclusion is that some of the things she says I can agree with, but she herself is a definite turnoff. A lot like her husband, I reckon.
DeleteI wonder just how many would have actually turned up to hear her live at Festival Hall in Melbourne ? 10% of the 24+ aged population of melbourne is a bit over 300,000 (about 306,000 back in 2015, but Melbourne's population increases by around 100,000 per annum) so if 10% is the "estimated" One nation support level, that would be a very sizable potential audience (and lots more than 5000, obviously).
But now we'll never know.
Perused past Preoccupy Oz protest, all people who think freedom of speech = freedom 2 b heard, time wasters ... send in the beer canons
ReplyDelete